


These Lives We Lead [They're Killing Me]

by BeneficialAddiction



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Awesome Phil Coulson, BAMF Clint, BAMF Phil Coulson, Cabins, Clint Feels, Clint Has Issues, Clint Needs a Hug, Clint takes off, Comes Back Wrong, Coulson Lives, Coulson's a mess, Fix-It, Insomnia, Losing His Mind, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Not, POV Phil Coulson, Phil Needs a Hug, Phil has bigger issues, Post BONY, Post-Loki, Road Trips, Roque the Chevy truck, Tahiti is a Magical Place, Trucks, cabin in the woods, hypergraphia, maine, mountain men, not AOU compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2018-07-24 18:22:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7518476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeneficialAddiction/pseuds/BeneficialAddiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unstable and worried that he's losing his mind when heated memories of a certain archer begin to dance through his dreams, Phil Coulson very nearly panics when he learns that the Avengers have misplaced his asset. Determined to bring Clint back into the fold, confused, obsessive, and angry, Phil gives SHIELD and the Avengers the slip and begins methodically checking the ex-mercenary's old bolt holes, but what he finds is not what he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude

The thing about paling around with the Avengers was you tended to forget you were just a man, at least until you couldn't anymore. 

Hang around with super-soldiers and gods, radioactively-enhanced doctors and geniuses in computerized suits and you forget, right up until you're being slammed through a wall or crushed under a metric ton of robot-rubble. 

Don't get him wrong, Clint's fit as fuck, still rocks a six-pack and keeps up with all of them, but he's not twenty-six anymore. He's coming home sorer after every fight, more battered and bruised than any of the rest of them, and sometimes his elbows ache when it rains. 

There's no one to tell him to go to medical anymore. 

It's been almost a year since Coulson died – eight months. 

Thirty-three weeks and four days, if you were counting. 

Tasha looked after him at first, when neither of them were sure how he would do, if he would off himself or pull his shit together. It took some time but he did ok, went to psych voluntarily to help him work through a grieving process for the first time in his fucked up life. Then it was keeping busy, getting cleared for as many missions as possible and training all the rest of the time, and after a while she stopped shadowing his every step. 

Five months out, the Winter Soldier came in. 

After that nobody spared a thought for Clint, which he got, because Bucky was ten times the hot mess he was. Steve and Nat and Tony, even Bruce were too focused on fixing the guy to worry about him, and that was fine. 

Clint was stable, a grown man, capable of taking care of himself. 

He was just... 

Tired. 

He was a social creature at heart, and at the moment there was no one left for him. 

He could get along, obviously, make do, but it wasn't exactly pleasant. He missed his dead handler terribly, the most central figure in his life, his best friend edging on something more before Clint had gone and gotten him killed. He'd mostly worked through that bit, the guilt and the vicious ache, but he still paused sometimes waiting to hear Coulson's voice in his ear. 

As for the rest of it Clint had never really thrived on the public attention the way some of the others did. 

Not like Steve, who was proud of his position as an American figurehead and his ability to sway the world to the better, certainly not like Tony who thrived in the limelight, swanning around on stage like he was born to it. 

Probably a good thing, since he'd never been the big ticket item anyway, never sought out for interviews or booked solo for photo shoots, hardly mentioned in the media at all except for 'that guy with the bow.' 

They'd even bastardized his name – _Hawk Guy_ – and that had hurt. 

Stupid, but there it was. 

Clint had always been the guy in the background, the unsung hero, too busy overseeing from above or dragging civilians out of harm's way at the edges to be caught in the center of the battle. 

Now, the longer they worked together, the smoother their operation became, the bigger their reputation and the better their personal record, the less the Avenger's seemed to need Clint. Hell, there were some battles now when he didn't even fire a single arrow. He still got a good workout most of the time, still came back exhausted and aching, but with Bruce under control and Bucky slowly making his way out into the field, his role was becoming smaller and smaller. 

It wasn't anything overt, wasn't anything cruel. Nobody said anything, and they were all just as close as they'd ever been. Clint could still joke with Nat and work out with Steve, talk with Bruce and collaborate on trick arrows with Tony, but things just weren't the same and never would be. 

Clint had never longed for the days of Strike Team Delta like he did now, when he would never get those days back again. The days of a small, intimate team, just him and the two people he trusted most in the world, the two people he _loved_ the most, the days of being the elite, the absolute best in the world, with a name and a reputation that good guys and bad guys alike didn't speak aloud. 

A part of him missed that. 

The rest of him just wanted to sleep. 

It was still hard getting up every day and going through the motions, low-grade depression that he hid behind grins and practical jokes, grief that he allowed himself to feel. 

Still, time crept by and his restlessness grew, at odds with himself and unsure of what he wanted, feeling useless and increasingly in the way. He began getting ideas, nothing stupid, not like Nat had been worried about just... maybe taking a break. 

Not like, an island vacation or anything, just a few weeks to himself. 

Figure out who he was again, reorient himself to a different world. 

He'd been immersed in SHIELD so long, lived in a place where it was just him and Nat and Coulson, he hadn't quite assimilated to the Avengers like he'd wanted to. 

And yeah, ok, it had been less than a year and maybe he hadn't quite given it as much of a go as he could've, but that was exactly what he was talking about. 

Anything Clint did he did with his whole heart, whether that was being a no-good two-bit merc or an Avenger. 

He'd been a specialist for SHIELD for more than ten years, a member of Strike Team Delta for six. 

He wasn't quite sure who he was outside of that. 

Some time to get his head on straight sounded... nice. 

No pressure, no expectations... 

Quiet. 

In the end it was easy to do. 

No one even noticed the warning signs. 

Money moved, contacts were made, old identities shuffled, and in the end all that was left to do was to leave a note with Jarvis and catch the last flight out of J.F.K.


	2. Waking Up

Phil Coulson had never minded the heat. 

As an Army Ranger he had spent years in the burning sands of the Middle East, sweating under deserts suns, and in the end the heat became a part of him, sank beneath his skin, felt like home. Then Tahiti happened, and it was all he could remember for a while, pain and fear and pleading criss-crossed with images of a tropical island, screaming as he laid out in the sun on a white sand beach, fruity drinks as sweet as morphine in his hand and the ocean lapping at his feet, needles pricking at his toes to test his nerve reaction. 

It wasn't the same after that, _he_ wasn't the same, in fact he could hardly stand it. In his SHIELD hospital bed he tossed and turned, sweating and groaning, kicking off even the lightest of sheets, feverish and dreaming of blistering, full-body sunburns. When they cleared him and sent him back to work, long before they should've, he kept his office on the bus like a freezer, found a way to lock the air conditioning in his bunk after the rest of his team threatened to revolt if they woke up one more time to their breath smoking. 

Weeks passed, months, countless missions, and he was... ok, but he always felt a bit ill, a bit achey, like there was something wrong, something missing. Physically he seemed to be doing well, a little too well perhaps, his chest terribly scarred but the heart underneath as strong as ever, his body as fit as it had always been. His mind he wasn't so sure about. He couldn't quite recall what had happened – his memory of the event was blankish and blurry, outweighed by the memories of Tahiti and by violent, penetrating pain – and everything before that seemed strangely scripted, too neat, too clean. 

He remembered being a top agent of SHIELD, the director's good eye and he remembered being in charge of some of the best assets they had in their employ. He remembered being sent out on the most dangerous and difficult missions because he always achieved his objective, and that was very nearly all. The names, the faces, the details; none of it seemed to ring through for him, years of his life a hazy summary half-redacted, like he couldn't find the original report. 

They told him he was fine. 

That the memories would come with time if they were important, and if they didn't then they obviously weren't. 

They told him that the nightmares and the flashbacks, the experiences of phantom pain were all left over from the surgeries, from the physical therapy he'd done while on medical leave in Tahiti, that his brain had shut down to protect itself from the physical trauma and it was still recovering. 

They told him he was still recovering, not to worry because he was improving all the time. 

He wasn't. 

He started to feel paranoid, constantly looking over his shoulder for someone who wasn't there, turning with a joke or an order on his tongue when there was no one around to listen. He found himself wanting things from his team that even they were incapable of, waiting for them to do things that didn't make any sense, failing to give them orders or direction because he expected them not to need it. He began to question his own ability to lead, whether or not he was truly fit for any kind of duty at all, let alone to be the one leading the bus, heading their missions. 

He went to the ones he thought he trusted, Maria Hill and Melinda May, his boss, his _friend_ Nick Fury, and they told him the same thing, told him that he had suffered severe trauma but was coming back, that he was improving, that he was fine. 

They were keeping something from him. 

The hair on the back of his neck stood up whenever he was in the room with any of them, his skin crawled with the sensation of being watched. They were keeping tabs on him, May especially, but because he didn't know why he couldn't resent them for it as much as he wanted to. 

At least at first. 

Eventually though they couldn't lie to him anymore, couldn't brush him off, couldn't tell him that he was getting better, because he wasn't. 

He was getting _worse_. 

The nightmares and the flashbacks came more and more frequently, not just while he was asleep. He was triggered by the smallest of things; a common phrase, a simple action, anything at all to do with Tahiti or islands or tropical vacations. Memories that didn't feel like his began to flood his mind, memories of a morgue, cool and quiet, a surgery table under hot, yellow lights, the mechanical squeal and whine of tools. His sleep became erratic, he woke up sweating and pacing, and to top it all off, he started hearing voices. 

One voice. 

A male voice, not as deep as he expected, cheerful, teasing. 

Sometimes it was words, sometimes just the tone and the cadence, like he was feeling it instead of hearing it, but he knew that voice. 

Thought he knew it. 

It felt like seeing someone at a distance in the dark; his brain recognized the shape, the sound, the silhouette, but his logic just kept second-guessing itself, preventing him from grabbing on to the name that hovered just out of reach. 

It didn't matter; hearing _any_ voices inside his head that weren't his own should have been enough to bench him, but it wasn't. They kept sending him out, again and again and again, even when he began to have waking dreams, even when he wasn't sure if the images of a grinning, well-muscled blonde and a stunning redhead that danced through his thoughts were memory or imagination or hallucination. 

He reported it of course, all of it, but they brushed it off and told him it was normal, that he was merely beginning to remember some of the finer details that he'd lost when he'd been stabbed. They called it minor, unimportant, but to him it felt like anything but – those images, those memories caused some of the strongest emotions in him that he had felt since waking up from his coma. Sensations of trust, of intimacy, of family surged in his chest whenever thoughts of the two flickered in the back of his mind, a strange, electric heat snapping at his nerve endings when he heard the blonde's laugh echo in his ears. 

It had been his voice that Phil had been hearing, and something strong and aching surged inside of him whenever he let himself linger with the man, lost inside his own head. 

Still, it was an oddly soothing kind of ache, nothing like the vicious pain associated with most of his other memories, just a deep-seated sort of longing that warned him he wasn't being told the whole truth. He had yet to really bond with any of his new team in a way that felt natural and normal, and the things he felt when he thought about this man were deeper than any he could remember having. 

It should have been all right, should have been something he could cope with, but he seemed to be losing the thread of his own thoughts. He began to sleepwalk, coming to consciousness in places he most certainly hadn't gone to sleep in, began scribbling and doodling in shorthand notes he didn't recognize. The insomnia increased and the hypergraphia intensified as each night passed, until he was spending more time scribbling on the walls than he was getting any kind of rest, and he didn't even realize he was doing it until someone grabbed him and shook him back to awareness, finally, _finally_ looking at him with something that approximated concern and all he could think was yes, _yes_ , something _is_ wrong. 

Melinda started watching him even more closely and without any attempt at subtlety, eyes wary with something like regret, and he began to watch his back around Ward, who he had never trusted. Half the time he felt like a dead man walking, no brain function at all, turning to stone inside until a Chekhovian fire axe took his left hand and set his nerves ablaze with pain. 

It was so much worse than it should have been. 

It should have been localized, bearable with the help of anesthetic and medical aid, but it spread through his body like a poison, acid burning through his veins until he was howling with it. Once he started screaming it seemed like he couldn't stop, even after he'd gone so hoarse he lost his voice. The lights, the sounds, the scents of the hospital and the surgery, the terrible, violent pain brought it all cascading back, and a weaker man might've died under the strain of it. 

Phil Coulson only wished he had. 

Tahiti. 

No. 

_Project T.A.H.I.T.I._

Damn Nick Fury for a lying, manipulative bastard. 

Phil had told him of the dangers of that project, the side effects which were now horribly, horribly familiar. He'd resigned from the program, demanded that the Director shut it down, and now, to find out that he had been a victim of it himself... 

And a victim was exactly what he was. 

He'd warned Nick what could happen if any man - human, Avenger, or otherwise - were subjected to the procedure, that they could be crushed under the weight of the pain used to bring them back, the knowledge of it. He'd obviously read Phil's report because he'd taken his recommendation – erased his memories and replaced them with pleasant ones, a tropical island vacation... 

Tried to anyway. 

Too bad for them it hadn't worked, because now he remembered, and he was pissed. 

In the quiet moments he spent alone in his hospital bed, recovering from the hack job that had been made of one of his limbs, Phil's mind was momentarily clear enough to come to a few realizations. Not only had Nick betrayed him by subjecting him to Project T.A.H.I.T.I. - the very program Phil had tried to eradicate - they had let him flounder through the side effects, clearly unsure of what they were or how they would develop. No doubt they hoped that his problems would resolve themselves - the insomnia, the hypergraphia, the general deterioration of his mental capacity - but if they didn't have any realistic projections, they'd certainly had a backup plan. 

The very team he'd thought he'd assembled himself had, in reality, been carefully assembled around him: Simmons to repair his body, Fitz to reprogram his brain, Ward to kill him if the time came, and May to watch over it all. 

They'd taken an uncontrolled gamble and done what SHIELD did best – hoped for the best while preparing for the worst. 

Those were the rules, the unspoken law of the organization. 

Shady underground government program, do what needs to be done. 

Made sense, couldn't have expected anything else. 

Yeah, he was pissed. 

It really was too bad about the hand – Phil's left hook was a hell of a lot better than his right. 

Well, it didn't matter. He had plenty of time to plot more sophisticated acts of retaliation, plenty of pain to keep him lucid. Nick owed him an explanation and a set of vintage Captain America trading cards, among other things, but Phil didn't actually believe he'd get either, and as much as he daydreamed about well-deserved revenge, he didn't actually care about it all that much. 

There were more important things on his mind. 

The Avengers, his team, the people who still labored under the impression that he was dead, and a certain blonde archer who had been haunting him for as long as he could remember.


	3. Blacking Out

Phil wakes up in a fever sweat, strapped to a hospital gurney. It's as close as he ever comes to panic, because he has no idea where he is and can't remember a damned thing, and he can hear the rapid-fire beat of a heart monitor pick up somewhere nearby, but then he catches sight of Nick Fury sitting at his bedside and all the fight goes out of him as the memories come sweeping back in. 

He'd been angry, arguing with May on the Bus. 

Shouting, making wide, sweeping gestures, and he can see it now in his mind's eye. 

He doesn't recognize himself. 

He's pushing her for an explanation, demanding answers, but his words are coming out all jumbled up and he's wincing, squeezing his eyes shut and touching his temples, and here in the hospital his breath catches in his throat as he relives the cutting pain that had sliced through his skull, nails driven into the soft, vulnerable brain beneath. He hears himself babbling, his speech rapid and unsteady even as May tries to calm him down, but he's not having any of it. He wants to know, and he wants to know now damn it! 

From the corner of his eye he sees Ward slinking up behind him and he turns on the younger agent, snarls at him, tells him to piss off because if he wants to kill him, he'll have to be a hell of a lot better than he is now. 

Then May clubs him over the back of the head and everything is blissful dark. 

He's not on the Bus anymore, that much is easy to discern. There's a gentle lull associated with the hellicarrier, a low hum that makes you feel like you're on the ocean. He can't feel that now – all he can feel is a dull throb at the base of his skull and a mounting frustration that's threatening to turn to anger. 

"Stand down Coulson," Fury rumbles beside him, and Phil unclenches his fists long enough to flip him the bird. "Well, better than nothing." 

Closing his eyes, Phil sinks back against the pillows, lets himself float a moment on a haze of down and the good kind of pain killers. If you ask him he's not getting enough – he still feels like he got hit by a truck – but with his wrists tied to the bed railings he can't reach the drop button connected to his IV drip. 

"You're in the med bay at HQ," Fury informs him, and Phil scoffs, sneering and heartfelt. 

"I'm aware of that Director," he says coldly, and beside him he hears the familiar creak of leather as Fury shifts in his seat. 

"Not anymore," he says, ignoring Phil's derisive snort. "Hill's taken over, for now anyway. There are things I need to do that are easier for me to accomplish outside of that role." 

"Bullshit. If Hill were Director I wouldn't be laying here right now mad as hell." 

"You thought I was going to let my one good eye go out like that?" 

"Project T.A.H.I.T.I. was meant to be used in the event of an Avenger's death!" Phil snarled, his eyes flashing open as he struggled unsuccessfully to sit up. "Not an agent's! It shouldn't have been used at all – I told you what could happen, told you to shut it down..." 

"Calm the fuck down or I'll drug you right back out again," Fury barked and Phil glared, practically dared him as he kept up a steady pressure on his restraints. "Christ Coulson, any motherfucker would think you're not happy to be alive." 

"This isn't alive," he hissed, and that finally got the reaction he was waiting for, a flinch like he'd slapped his old friend full in the face. "What am I doing here Marcus? Tell me that. Tell me why I'm still strapped down, why I can't remember how I got here, why I'm babbling like an idiot with no clue what the hell is coming out of my own mouth..." 

"The procedure is complicated, you know that," Fury defended. "But damn it Phil, it was effective. You're still here, and that's where I need you, not in a morgue or six feet under." 

"Is that why you sent May up on the Bus with me? And Ward?" 

For a moment Fury's silent, and he almost looks ashamed of himself, but it's gone so quickly Phil can't be sure. 

"That was a precaution." 

"Oh fuck you, it was a precaution," Phil sneers, shaking his fists so that the buckles at his wrists rattle. "A precaution like these?" 

"We weren't sure," Fury began slowly, and for the first time he truly does sound uncertain. This is a setback, a big one, especially after Phil had begun to show improvement in the wake of losing his hand. "Some of the things you said, on the Bus..." 

"I don't remember." 

"It's the remembering that's the damn problem!" 

Surprised by the vehemence of the outburst, Phil raises an eyebrow, waits for an explanation. 

"I took your advice Cheese. Well, most of it anyway. Had the med people scrub the memories of your death, of the procedure. Replaced them with an island vacation, first one in your damned career... Apparently it didn't stick." 

"Never did," Phil countered, feeling somehow as if he were revealing a secret he'd held onto too long. "Memories didn't get replaced, they just got overwritten." Huffing an unamused laugh, he closes his eyes again, settles back again. "Beachside torture – all services provided." 

"Jesus," Fury breathes. "Phil, I'm sorry. I'm a selfish bastard so I can't regret it, but I didn't want that for you." 

Phil firms up his jaw, doesn't respond. 

"But that's not really what you're all bent out of shape about, is it?" 

This time he opens his eyes, stares at the man who has been his closest friend and most trusted confidante for years, and for the first time, thinks that he might really hate him. 

"I needed you _here_ Phil," he explains in a flat, calm voice that tells Phil all he needs to know. "On the Bus. Leading _this_ team. You were right when you said that your death would bring the Avengers together – Stark and Rogers both stepped up." 

"I didn't go after a god with an untried weapon for Steve Rogers, and I certainly didn't do it for Tony Stark" Phil says carefully, opening his eyes because this is it. He needs to know, even if he's terrified of the answer. 

Fury looks at him carefully but he doesn't flinch, accustomed to that harsh, assessing gaze and beyond the point of caring. Then the man scoffs, tosses his head and something inside of him relaxes, the desperate dread abating. 

"Thought you couldn't remember anything," he accuses and Phil narrows his eyes. 

"I couldn't. If I had, I would have been on the first flight to New York a long time ago." 

A pause, silence, five, six beats of his heart and then Fury sighs. 

"Romanov got him back," he says, and Phil's whole body goes slack, his head dropping back onto the pillows as his eyes abruptly start to burn. "Decked him a good one, called it _cognitive recalibration_. Jumped right back into the fight too, stubborn bastard. Flew the Avengers in, brought down Loki's chariot himself... Gotta tell you though Phil, it was rough going there for a while. Wasn't sure he'd ever get his head screwed back on straight, had him on twenty-four-hour watch..." 

Phil's heart monitor gives a nasty jump and every muscle he has locks up, the sour taste of panic thick in his mouth. He hasn't thought of it till now, hasn't let himself think of it, but he knows Clint too well to doubt what the archer must have been thinking, the risks he would've taken. 

"It wasn't his fault," he says automatically, to himself, to the specter-Clint that lives inside his head. "What happened on the hellicarrier, in New York... it was Loki, not him. It wasn't his fault what happened..." 

"Oh to hell with New York," Fury growls, making a dismissive gesture. "Wasn't New York that had him all tied up in knots you dumb motherfucker." 

Ok, he's pretty sure he flatlined there for a second. 

He definitely felt his heart stop. 

That... that wasn't right, couldn't be right, it didn't... 

"That wasn't his fault either," he hears himself say, and this time Fury actually graces him with an eye roll. 

"You really think that matters? Hell Phil, you know what he's like – there's so much guilt and self-blame rattling around inside that thick skull of his I'm surprised there's room for anything else. I may only have the one good eye, but I saw the way he looked at you. Christ, how many years were you his handler, the only damn agent I've got that could convince him to follow an order? If it had been me... I can't blame him this time." 

Phil wants to deny it, wants to tell Fury he's wrong, but he remembers now, the way it felt just before Clint was taken. The sharpshooter had always been provocative and flirtatious and the two of them had always had good rapport, but then New Mexico had happened and he and Clint had been stuck in a van for sixteen hours on the way back, stopping at two different diners and a motel along the way and he'd thought, maybe. It had felt different, those last few weeks, quieter, warmer, like the air went out whenever they were alone in Phil's office, and he'd scolded himself mercilessly for getting his hopes up. 

Then Loki came and stole that chance, that hope, and Phil had died trying to get it back. 

"He went to psych," Fury says quietly, his voice too large and full for the room as the walls go collapsing in on him. "Pulled himself together. Mostly anyway. Got cleared to get back in the field, buddied up with the rest of them, did good work..." 

"Just tell me he's ok," Phil whispered hoarsely, unable to stand it anymore as he starts to suffocate under the weight of the emotions crowding in on him. There's a sharp pain lancing through his chest where he carries the evidence of Loki's attempt on his life, increasing pressure in his head and it's getting harder and harder to breathe. 

"He was." 

Distantly, Phil understands the restraints now. 

If he weren't tied to the bed he suspects he'd have his hands around Fury's throat. 

As it is he's practically freed himself anyway, bucking and thrashing and pulling so hard he nearly throws his shoulder. Fury is on his feet with his hands up, trying to calm him as the monitors around his bed go haywire, but Phil can't hear a word he's saying. There's too much screaming in his head – his own, Clint's – and he's too busy snarling and snapping at Fury like something rabid to try to make sense of it. He's shouting, knows it but doesn't feel it, doesn't understand the words that come rushing up out of some dark place inside him too alien to recognize. Hospital staff in green scrubs come swarming in and suddenly he's right back in that place, at the bottom of an empty amphitheater locked on to a steel operating table sweltering under hot, yellow lights. 

He manages a single scream before he blessedly, mercifully blacks out.


	4. Clearing Off

The next time he comes to, it's slowly and calmly and coherently. He knows where he is, recognizes the scents and sounds of medical even before he opens his eyes, and he remembers how he got there. He knows now why his wrists and elbows are still buckled to the bed, why he left arm aches, feels like it doesn't belong to him, and he knows why his thoughts feel jumbled and distracted. 

Fury's not there and that's probably for the best. He's not ready to speak to his old friend just yet, let alone forgive him. That's a long time coming, if at all. For now he needs the space. He can feel the fight still bubbling in his veins, even in the painful stump of his arm where they've taken away his prosthetic, and that's probably for the best as well. Despite the tingle heat that makes him clench his fist, press up against his bindings on instinct, he's still exhausted and aching and tired - without the enhanced robotic hand he's got no chance of breaking free. 

As long as he doesn't put his mind to it at least. 

The urge, the _need_ to get up and get out and get moving is nearly overwhelming, even if the more coherent part of his brain is telling him to lie back, to rest and recuperate, to observe and analyze and understand. It takes a moment for that understanding to kick in, for him to realize, to remember where he needs to be, why he needs to go. 

_Clint._

The memory comes with a flood of emotions, strong enough to sweep him away, and primary among them is fear. Fury's voice echoes in his ears – _he was_ \- no explanation to temper the ominous words. 

Phil can feel his heart start to pound against his ribs, his breath catch in his throat. Everything hurts and the pain concentrates in the arm he no longer has, in the gnarled scar that skates across his chest, in his skull. Before it helped, the sharp, piercing agony, cleared his mind and gave him the chance to think. Now it just hurts, makes him gasp and whine and panic as his thoughts start to spin and tangle, as the machines around his hospital bed start to hum and shriek in a language of beeps and whirs that he can't make any sense of. 

"Agent Coulson?" 

Phil sucks in a breath, startled when Helen Cho pokes her head through the curtains surrounding his bed. Last he'd heard she was working with the Avengers, liaising with Tony Stark to keep the physical bodies of superheroes up and running. He doesn't know what she's doing here, carrying a chart and fiddling with buttons and knobs as he grabs hold of his composure and wrestles it back into shape. 

"You're in the med bay of SHIELD headquarters," she says in a low, calm, pleasant voice, focusing on the thready red line that marks his heartbeat instead of looking at him, keeping threats and challenges out of her body language. "It's Tuesday, August twenty-third, approximately one pm, and you've been in a state of mild sedation for the last six hours." 

"What happened?" he chokes, swallowing down the sour, stinging bile at the back of his throat. 

Cho finally turns to him, hits the button to raise the back of his bed and offers him the token paper cup and bendy straw for which he is infinitely grateful. 

"We're not entirely sure," she replies, and Phil glares around the straw because isn't that comforting. "But we believe that extreme emotion triggers the side effects of Project T.A.H.I.T.I." 

"So we're saying it now?" he asks hoarsely, shaking his head when she offers him the cup a second time. "Tired of the song and dance?" 

"Agent Coulson, I hope you know I had no part in..." 

"I'm aware of that Ms. Cho," he replies, softening his voice and his countenance. He doesn't want to scare the doctor, to make her uncomfortable. What she said was true – she had no part in the original project nor in his... _recovery._ None of this was her fault. 

Unfortunately that wasn't making it any easier for him to keep his cool. 

"How are you feeling?" 

"Angry," he answers automatically, before huffing a bitter laugh. "Dear god, I've become Bruce Banner." 

"Not quite so serious Agent Coulson," Helen smiles, reaching for his wrist and taking his pulse. "But my staff and I would appreciate it if you stay calm." 

"Right." 

He feels a bit embarrassed, a bit sheepish as he looks down at the thickly woven restraints keeping his arms at his sides, even more so when Helen undoes the buckles and frees him. She putters around the bed for a few more minutes, talks about his condition in a smooth, confident voice despite the lack of information, briefing him competently and efficiently while checking the rest of his vitals. The side effects of his resurrection are still very much at play, the hypergraphia and the insomnia and the blacking out, the incoherent thoughts and the lost time and the aggressive reactivity, all apparently exacerbated by intense emotion. 

Fantastic. 

Sitting back against the pillows, he drags a hand down over his face, feels grit and stubble and weariness and wear. Helen looks sympathetic for all of a moment before she hands him the tablet that's been sitting on the chair Fury had previously occupied, wheeling the side table closer so he can reach the water pitcher and disappearing back through the curtains. He stares at it for a moment, sitting so innocuously in his lap, and he wonders if this is Nick taking the easy way out, telling him that Barton's dead without actually having to tell him. 

Phil's stomach cramps painfully and he wonders idly how long it's been since he last ate as he traces the corners of the tablet. 

Would it be better to know, to know for certain than to wonder, to spend his life desperately hoping? 

He isn't sure, so he doesn't know if he's making the right decision or not when he hits the power button and keys in the generic password to access the Starkpad. He's locked out of everything except what Fury wants him to see, and really there's no use trying to work around the firewall. He doesn't think Fury would risk pissing him off anymore than he already has at the moment, and without Stark besided him or on the other end of the phone to help he doesn't have a chance anyway. 

Why had SHIELD contracted with him again? 

Once the tablet's booted up it only takes a touch to flood the screen with missions reports, photos, newspaper columns and reputable blog posts – everything SHIELD's got on the archer as far back and including the Battle of New York, the end of which Phil had understandably missed. He doesn't actually believe that – he knows this is only what Fury deems it necessary for him to see – but he can pretend. He'll take what little comfort he can get as he sorts the information by date, starts at the beginning and hopes he never gets to the end. 

It's hard. It chokes him up, makes his heart pound and his fingers clench around the edge of the tablet, which sets his monitors off like cathedral bells. He struggles to keep things straight but it's like timelines are overlapping in his head, his memories of Clint parading through his mind like he'd never lost them even as he tries to piece together what happened after Loki ran him through. Natasha's report helps the most, her neat, succinct after-actions detailing how she'd fought for her life against the brain-washed archer, recalibrated his brain and freed him from his hypnosis with one good blow to the head. 

Hers are the reports he focuses on – he doesn’t need to read the news articles to know what they'd all said, suspicious and accusatory of the man who seemingly traded sides mid-battle. For months their words would have been cruel and cutting, and Phil knows Clint will have read them all, taken them all to heart despite putting up a casual, unconcerned front. Instead he reads Natasha's, both what she's written and what she hasn't, learns that in the beginning Clint spent twenty hours a day volunteering, clearing rubble, moving pop-up hospitals, chasing cats and dogs and returning them to the shelters they'd escaped from. He reads about the archer's insomnia, the crippling guilt he'd tried and failed to hide from his observant, red-headed partner. He reads about the suspected suicidal ideation, the increased isolation and the withdrawal from the team, and he reads about how, after a while, things seemed to get better. 

Months go by in pictures and reports and Phil pours over them, his eyes feasting on the information like it's the first meal he's had in weeks. It rather is – it's been so long since he's seen Clint, touched him, heard his voice he's almost forgotten. _Has_ forgotten, and that's the worst of it. The tablet shows him a pale, weary young man, thinner than he remembers now with dark circles under his eyes, but eventually he starts to improve, puts the weight back on and starts grinning again, smarting off to journalists and newscasters. It doesn't take long for Hawkeye to get back into the public's good graces – the picture of him pulling a soaked, mud-streaked puppy out of a storm drain helps, but Phil knows him well enough to see that he's still hurting.   
But the incidents start to trickle off, med reports running out, and it looks like Clint had been doing ok. Perhaps he wasn't as involved with the rest of the Avengers as Phil would have hoped for him, but he was there, he was smiling, he was ok. 

Then suddenly, about eight months ago, he wasn't. 

It's a point of pride for Phil that Clint disappeared so completely that even Nick Fury and SHIELD, even the infamous Black Widow can't find him. That pride wars with fear, with uncertainty, with the anger that makes it so hard for him to think. It's easy for him to see what happened, how Clint slowly began to fade into the background as the Avengers became closer, more cohesive, as the Winter Soldier is brought back and easily assimilates. Heat boils in his blood when he thinks how it must have been – Clint, the only unaltered human in the group who fights and trains tooth and nail to keep up, still aching, still unsure of his place after all this time, and they've pushed him out of it. 

Abuse or neglect, intentional or not, the Avengers have lost him. 

They've lost him. 

They've lost Phil's asset, Phil's... 

He has to fight to get his heartbeat back down to normal, his breathing even. The last thing he wants now is for Helen to pop back in to check on him. The rapid beep of the monitors is loud and accusatory in his ears, and if there was ever a time for clear heads and clean thinking it's now, so he counts his breaths, focuses on stretching individual muscle groups as best he can confined to the hospital bed. If he's going to find Clint he needs to start at the Tower, and to do that he needs to get out of med. They won't let him walk out of here – Fury will have him on lockdown, likely on surveillance, but Phil's not been called the best for nothing, and he's got more than a few tricks up his sleeve. 

Lying back, he blows out a breath, tries to keep his mind blank so that the anger won't creep up on him again, unconsciousness like a great, black wave. Helen will be back eventually – she's likely to give him a full run down this time so he'll know his current physical limits a bit better. She's also likely to return his prosthetic, and as remedial as his current model is, it will still be easier to work with two hands. Lying back on his pillows he stares up at the ceiling, the soft, foam-board drop tiles above him and smiles.

Two days later he carves a note to Fury into the wall – he's quitting as of now, cashing in every bit of vacation time he's ever been owed. He'll come back when he's ready, when he's found Clint and got himself under control – in that order. He leaves the scalpel lodged in the drywall, punctuating how very serious he is, then hauls himself up into the ceiling and escapes through the vents. 

Clint's not the only one who knows how to make an exit.


	5. Showing Up

The next time he's consciously aware of his surroundings he's standing in the shadow of Avengers Tower in a crumpled, filthy suit with no idea how he got there. He remembers the vents above med bay, the covert trip to Fury's 'unofficial office,' the theft of some cash and an untraceable black AmEx but not much more. He doesn't know where the suit came from – it's not one of his but it fits like a glove, and perusal of his pockets uncovers a double-bladed pocket knife he doesn't recognize either. He's still got the cash but the credit card's missing, and there's a creased, torn ticket stub in his breast pocket from a Greyhound station in Charleston, South Carolina. 

He aches, all of him, but mostly his stump of an arm where it meets the prosthetic and the whole of his chest beneath his scar, where his heart pounds in violent panic. 

Has he really traversed the East Coast like this; alone, unarmed, unaware? 

He couldn't even say for certain where he'd started, where the new undercover HQ _was_. 

Shivering, suddenly chilled, Phil tucks himself in close to the side of the building, out of the flow of the foot traffic that bustles around him like he isn't even there. 

Hell maybe he's not. 

Phil closes his eyes, counts his breathing, panics when that makes it worse and his good hand grips the knife in his pocket, unreadable symbols flickering through his brain in a rapid-fire, staccato beat. His feet start to move and he follows where they lead – they seem to know where they're going better than he does anyway. Circling the building he slips round to the hidden entrance at the back, through a door that looks like it's locked but isn't, down a short flight of stairs and through an underground parking garage. He remembers coming this way once before, following Pepper Potts at a determined clip, a yammering Tony Stark skipping along ahead. 

What had he been doing here, how long ago had he... 

It doesn't matter and the whole line of thought slips away from him like water through his fingers, easy because he isn't trying to hold on. He doesn't question the simplicity of stepping into the private elevator, the doors opening for him silently and smoothly, taking him up without a second's hesitation. No instruction, no buttons to push, no credentials or identification to prove, just a short, quiet ride and then the doors are opening again on the eighty-sixth floor. 

Phil steps out without question, finds himself in what looks like the common room of a exceptionally well-funded community college dorm building. There's a kitchen off to his left; state-of-the-art, huge stainless-steel fridge, a long, slim, granite-topped island, small work table against the wall of windows. Half a level down, four short steps is the living area, a large grouping of fluffy couches and armchairs, ottomans and a wide coffee table, massive flat screen mounted to the wall and surrounded by a tangle of a dozen gaming systems. It's messy and lived in and scattered with bits and pieces that his brain just barely grasps as familiar – Stark's wrench set, one of Natasha's knives, an abandoned sketchbook and pencils – and it makes something twinge beneath his ribs. 

The silence is the strangest, cold and unexpected, and he feels like he's waiting for something, for someone to step into the room or a phone to ring, but he's alone. For the first time in a very long time, he is well and truly alone, and the feeling settles into the pit of his stomach like a bellyful of vodka; slick and cold and sweet, _dizzying_. 

He paces for a while. 

He feels... _calmer_ than he thinks he should be, feels like he's supposed to be mad about something. He's waiting, waiting, waiting and nothing comes, and the afternoon passes in the blink of an eye, drags on like it will never end. His mind is blank and yet spins with tangled thought, words he doesn't understand. His fingers drum against his thighs as he walks back and forth across the floor, on his biceps when he folds his arms over his chest, tries to hold himself together. His breath saws harshly in and out of his lungs, sharp and a little too fast and his hands start to throb with the need to write, to carve, even the stupid fake one. He fights it for an hour, maybe more, and by then it hurts to much to ignore, doesn't matter enough to resist. 

He picks the wall on the far right – it's wide and clear and clean, a flat, pale, sage green, and affords him a good view of the elevator, the two hallways that lead to the left and down. The knife in his pocket is sharp against the pad of his thumb when he tests the steel, and cuts smoothly through the paint and primer. The drywall underneath is thick and white and chalky, and the symbols he carves into its surface stand out stark and white and perfect, all neat angles and smooth, sweeping lines. The blade lasts for ninety minutes, nearly two-thirds of the length of the wall before the dullness is too grating and vibrates unpleasantly against his fingers, but there's another in the knife and it's only a second's work to swap. 

He attacks the wall with new vigor, starts up where he left off without even having to think about where he was, the unknown symbols flowing from him as smoothly as the English alphabet, Morse code, or Russian glyphs he learned so long ago. 

That's how the Avengers find him fifteen minutes later, leaning into the wall as his good hand details thin, delicate cuts and his fake fingers move over what's already there, tracing the designs like Braille. The shouts and the weapons being trained on him, the gaps and the cries of his name, none of them make him flinch, or even turn from his task. There's sweat at his temples and a trembling in his arms but there's something in him that needs to be said, and that's more important than a paltry explanation for his resurrection.

**AVAVA**

"Jarvis what the hell?!"

Tony says it, but they're all thinking it. 

Blocked up in the bottleneck of the hallway where the elevator lets out onto the common floor, he, Steve, Nat, Bruce, Bucky, and Thor all come to a stumbling halt, knocking into each other and gasping with a mixed flurry of emotion as they catch sight of the figure waiting there. 

It looks like Agent Coulson, sure, but it can't be. 

He'd dead, done, has been for months now. 

Doesn't matter that it looks just like him, wears a suit just like him, stays cool and calm and non-reactive just like him when they all come barreling in. 

But it can't be him. 

Natasha and Tony share a glance, watch as the Coulson-clone carves strange symbols into the wall, nearly full, the first taking note of the knife and the clone's grip, the latter's mind already attempting to place the glyphs. 

"Why is this _thing_ in my living room?" 

"Agent Coulson is still coded to the Tower Sir," the AI replies, and the Avengers' hearts skip. "While not an identicle match, all BioScans indicate that this is indeed Agent Coulson." 

"LMD's..." 

"BioScans indicate one hundred percent organic properties Sir," Jarvis interrupts. 

No one speaks. 

No one moves but the apparently authentic Coulson, still carving, still tracing the symbols with a black-gloved hand as reality realigns. 

"Fury," Tony finally growls, and the Coulson snarls right back, his grip tightening on the knife. 

"God-damn lying son of a bitch!" he hisses, still facing the wall. "Told him didn't I? Told him to shut it down, wasn't safe, didn't come back right." 

"T.A.H.I.T.I." Natasha breathes, and the Coulson barks a bitter laugh. 

Turning around, he faces the lot of them and smiles serenely. 

"It's a magical place." 

"Ok, this whole thing is seriously starting to creep me out," Tony says, and behind him the other Avengers nod and shift uncomfortably. "Is that really Agent Agent or not?" 

"Not." 

They all turn, stare at the man with a pocket knife held tight in his fingers, with eyes that see everything and none of what's in front of him. 

"Not the same," he murmurs, trading the knife to his left hand and massaging the forearm. "Not an Agent anymore. Quit. Why did I..." 

He shakes his head, frowns,. 

"Thinks he can hold me," he mutters, starting to pace. "Thinks he can lock me down, tie me down, lie to me. Lie, lie, tell the truth, lie lie lie. And what's he going to do, _trace me? Track me?"_

Coulson bares his teeth, laughs cold and deadly, and then the Avengers are staring in horror as he detaches his left hand, pulls the prosthesis from his sleeve and turns it over, tucks it beneath his elbow and taps at the port of the wrist with the tip of the pocket knife. 

"Should know better by now," he mutters, fishing around with the blade before giving up and snapping the hand back on, as casually as donning a glove. "Always was smarter than that. Like I wouldn't notice, like I'd _forget_..." 

"Coulson?" 

It's quieter, gentler, more hesitant than anything that's ever come out of the Widow's mouth, but she's not sure she's ever been this afraid in her life before. This man is one of two that she trusts in all the world, the closest she comes to loving. She lost him all those months ago, never showed the hurt, but now here he is, standing in front of her, and more than anything she wants to be taken into his arms where she can weep. 

The man snaps to attention at the sound of his name and his eyes are burning black, dark and dilated and angry, and every one of them, strong and powerful and heroes all, take a step back. 

"Where is he?" he asks, his voice thick and rough and pained, steel dragged over gravel. 

They all know who he means, wonder how he could know, misunderstand why it matters so much. 

_"Where is he?!"_

This time he shouts, demands his answer, and the knife in his hand is suddenly embedded in the wall, the handle quivering with the force of the impact mere inches from the Widow's left ear. 

"What did you do, what the _fuck_ did you do?" he snarls, and they all pale, cower under the weight of their missing member. 

They're all responsible, they know that. It was only after Hawkeye left that they truly felt his absence, realized that he had been pulling away long before that. They'd seen it, recognized it, knew that it was grief and guilt and the dizzy sickness of spiraling, but none of them had known how to fix it. None of them had reached out or spoken up because he had been ok, had been moving on, getting better, picking up, and so they'd shifted their focus, turned their backs. 

They hadn't meant to of course, still loved him as much as they ever did. From his note they knew that he was alright, that he wanted some time to find himself, to be alone without the Avengers, but that didn't stop him from being missed, from being wanted. Still, there was little they could do but hope their friend was safe. 

Every one of them knew that this was not a satisfactory answer. 

"You promised," Coulson snarls, glaring at the Widow like he could kill her with the intensity of his eyes alone. " _We_ promised, the both of us together. I still remember that much, no matter what he's taken from me. We _promised_ he would never be alone, that we wouldn't let him wander. Where is he?" 

It's fitting that Bruce Banner is the one to recognize the danger. 

Perhaps he understands, what with having his own anger living inside his chest. 

He tries to warn them, to calm them all before it happens, but he's not fast enough. 

The fierce fury burning in Coulson's eyes takes hold and none of them escape unscathed before he drops to the floor, unconscious. 

Perhaps he just wanted to fight.


	6. Starting In

They're trying to help. 

They think they _are_

Phil just wishes they'd stop. 

They haven't talked about what happened - his death, his resurrection, Fury's lies, the way he attacked them when they'd first gotten back to the Tower. At least, they haven't talked about it with _him_. They seem to think that reminding him about any of it will trigger him, will set him off again, and hell, maybe they're right. He hardly knows himself anymore – who is he to make that call? 

He'd swum up to consciousness slowly, his whole body aching, his chest and arm the most of course. He'd been freezing and there was a dull throb behind his eyes and his fingers had itched for a knife but he'd managed to close his fist around the sensation, to sit up slowly with a groan and scrub a hand over his face. His jacket and shoes had been removed and are placed neatly on the coffee table beside the couch and the Avengers had all been on the far side of the living area grouped close and staring. 

He'd cursed, flexed his fingers around the socket of his new arm, and that had been enough to break the silence, the awkwardness. It had been like someone had hit a reset button – Bruce fetched pain killers and a glass of water, Steve had closed the blinds, Natasha had sat down beside him and curled up as close as she could, and from there it was almost as if he'd never left them. 

Even now, a full week later, he marvels at how easy it had been. 

No long stories, no painful explanations, just complete and total acceptance by all of them, even Bucky Barnes, who eyes him warily at first and doesn't really talk, but who treats him just the same as he treats any of Steve Rogers' friends. 

It's something he doesn't feel like he's earned and it hurts, because he knows Clint hadn't been shown the same. 

Acceptance yes, but not the same level of attention and care that Phil was getting, the attention and care Clint had _needed._  
He'd much rather it had been fawned upon the archer than himself, for more than one reason. 

He absolutely hates it. 

They've already gone to Fury, he knows they have, because there's a tense sort of calm around the Tower that he recognizes, like being inside the eye of a storm, or inside of that moment on an op right before everything goes to shit but it's ok, because you recognize it and you know it's coming and you can brace for it. 

Phil's not trying to brace for it anymore, he's just letting it rock him. 

Likely not the best coping strategy, but it hasn't killed him yet. 

He'd been sure that Fury would come scoop him back up – new technology, unstable agent and all. It takes an embarrassingly long time for him to begin to suspect that maybe the Avengers have something to do with that. That maybe they've told the Director that Phil had come and gone and they don't know where he is, or that they've just closed up ranks and refused to hand Phil over. Knowing Tony Stark the second is more likely, even if it can't last forever. 

They don't talk about it, don't talk about what happened, but he can see the way they all look at him, nervous, anxious, curiosity tinged with fear, especially when Phil fails to get back to his old self. He wanders the Tower in a daze, muttering to himself about TAHITI and reciting old missions like a broken record. Part of it is him trying to jumpstart his own memories, trying to close the gaping holes left in his brain, but the other bit is less innocuous, his mind skipping like a broken record. He doesn't eat, barely sleeps, and paces the hallways like he's looking for something. 

Half the time he doesn't know what he's looking for, he just knows that something is missing, that something isn't right. 

The rest of the time he's haunted by the specter of a man who isn't there; the glint of mischief in gorgeous eyes, the musical cadence of a voice that can go from gruffly playful to silky-smooth and seductive in a heartbeat, the most intense feeling of affection and familiarity and _home_ that he's ever felt. 

No one says Clint's name. 

No one mentions him. 

Not the Avengers, not Phil. 

They're all thinking it. 

He can see it, in the way they watch him out the corner of their eye, in the way they abruptly shut up when he comes into a room, in the way they quickly shutter away the concern he doesn't want to be the target of. 

It's driving him mad, and he isn't getting any better. 

He's still having trouble sleeping, still blacking out, still fighting the urge to wrote and carve and shout. 

He's angry when he's not nearly catatonic. He doesn't eat, barely rests, but he can't seem to get his thoughts into enough order to actually do anything about it. 

Just as he begins to wonder if he shouldn't go back to SHIELD, if he isn't so much of a broken puppet that he should return to Geppetto's shop, the Avengers throw him a life preserver. He thinks he might hate them for it half the time, but they seem determined to drag him back into the realm of the living no matter the cost, kicking and screaming all the way. 

Stark begins construction on a new, high-tech prosthetic, one that will work in tandem with the cradle to speed the healing process and decrease Phil's pain levels as much as possible. 

Bruce looks into his medical files, both physical and mental, though Phil doesn't want to hypothesize as to how he's accessed them. 

Thor spends hours pouring over the carvings Phil left on the common room wall, calls friends and calls in favors as he labors to decipher a language that even the crown Prince of Asgard doesn't appear to recognize. 

Steve offers to spar with him and doesn't hold back, leaves him aching and exhausted in the best way, a way that reminds him that he's still a living, breathing man who can bruise and break and bleed. 

Natasha watches over him. 

He remembers what he said before the fight broke out, how he'd accused her and thrown his knife, how he'd targeted her specifically in the melee. She's the only one he apologizes to and she apologizes back, but he's still angry and they both know it. They don't talk about it, they don't hug and make up, but there's an understanding there that this too shall pass eventually. 

She keeps him safe. 

It's stupid – that he trusts her to take him out if necessary, when he hated May so much for doing the same. He thinks some small part of him hopes it will be Natasha, feels that she – more than May or anyone else – deserves that right. It's messed up but he's SHIELD, they're all SHIELD, and they're all a little messed up aren't they? 

Stark and Banner seem to think that won't be necessary, that he'll be alright. He's acquiesced to having his brain and his body scanned, to having his blood drawn and tissues sampled, more because he's listless and bored than anything else. They find a strange, radioactive glow in his chest and in his brain, foreign DNA in his blood, but nothing that explains any more than his resurrection. 

Nothing to suggest why he's anything less than himself, why his memory still feels like swiss cheese, shot full of holes. 

The one thing, the one constant is that sensation of missing something, of something being gone, something being wrong. 

"Um, yeah," Stark drawls, staring at Phil with one eyebrow cocked over the edge of his monitors. "Your _hand?_ You chopped off with an _axe?_ You're supposed to have _two_ you know." 

Phil ignores him, focuses on the tingle running up his arm to his elbow. His severed wrist is lying in the cradle, nano-tech he doesn't understand multiplying the healing process a hundred-fold, even over what SHIELD medical could do. He's been down in Stark's labs for more than an hour now, too long if you asked his opinion, but Tony's actually attempting to be on his best behavior and he is trying to help. The socket he's designed will be fused directly with nerves and bone, the matching prosthetic infinitely more controllable, down to the most minute of neural commands. 

Or so he promises anyway. 

It's not that Phil doubts him, it's just that his missing hand is fairly low on his list of priorities at the moment. 

He needs to get to work. 

He doesn't speak, doesn't say anything to Stark, but certainly the genius suspects something when Phil leans forward and snags a StarkTab off the table, rests it on his thigh and starts tapping away with his good hand. He makes a start by bringing up everything he can on Clint in the last few weeks that he was in the Tower, more than even SHIELD had. Jarvis is hugely helpful, supplementing Phil's searches without verbal prompting, calling up pictures, video, and statistics that make his throat feel hot and tight. Tony works silently and diligently over the prosthetic but Phil can feel his eyes on him, feel their weight, and it's stupid but it makes him squirm. 

"We'll help, if you want." 

Phil blinks, lifts his head and finds Tony staring down at the bits and pieces in his hands intently, actually looks a little flush. 

"Shouldn't have happened," he says, but it's almost like he's talking to himself more than Phil. He flicks him a glance that's too perceptive, too pitying before going back to his work. "Didn't realize how bad it was. What he was going through. If I had, I..." 

He shrugs, tosses his screwdriver onto the counter with a metallic clang and carries the prosthetic, Phil's _hand,_ over to his side. 

"Steve needed help, for him and for Bucky," he says, turning off the cradle and carefully lifting the lid so that Phil can extract his arm. "It's not an excuse, not a good one anyway. But you're right. We're supposed to be a team." 

Phil watches in silence as the genius fiddles with the ports in the wrist of the prosthetic, huffs a self-deprecating laugh. 

"Might be the one thing I'm not very good at," he admits. "But Clint..." 

He pauses, sharp eyes taking in the way Phil flinches at the sound of his name, can't hold it back. 

"He belongs here," he determines. "With us. And... with you?" 

It's a question, absolutely, not a statement, but Phil doesn't feel like giving him an answer. It's almost more than the man deserves, and the simple fact that he's biting down the surging anger, the hot, rampant emotion that swells inside his chest when he thinks of what the Avengers have done, what they've let happen, is the only thing he can offer. 

That and his permission. 

"Find him," he says, and Tony nods, serious and steadfast, maybe even a little shaken by the chill threat in Phil's voice. 

No more words pass between them – those two are enough. 

Tony fits the prosthetic to the new port at the end of Phil's abbreviated arm and beside him the screen of the tablet whirls and blinks as Jarvis starts his silent search.


	7. Sneaking Away

Stark doesn't find him, of course he doesn't. 

He isn't looking in the right places. 

It's all right – Phil doesn't mind. He'd only demanded the genius look at all to keep him out of his way, to keep all of the Avengers occupied and out of his way. They were the ones to lose Clint, to drive him off, and while in his right mind Phil would eventually forgive that, would rationalize it and concede that it wasn't entirely their fault, he has yet to let that greatest of transgressions go. He's irritable, aggressive, glaring and barking and snarling at them all, treating them to cold shoulders and silent treatments as often as rants and lectures that span multiple languages and trail off into nothingness. 

Yes, let them look for Hawkeye, let them stay busy and out from underfoot. 

Phil, he'll quietly do his own search, and he'll be far more successful than they. 

The vigilante ninja Ronin has all his own bolt holes, and one of them has to be the right one. 

Oh, Clint never told him, never actually said it out loud, but Phil's not a stupid man. He could put two and two together, and the archer had left him enough hints over the years. It had been strange, never receiving the full admission and yet being given all the breadcrumbs he could ask for to lead him to the right conclusion. He understood the need for secrecy, still does, the need to keep something back for yourself, to keep you safe, but a part of him wishes that Clint had trusted him enough to tell him. The rest of him, the bigger part, recognizes that the man _had_ trusted him, that that was what all those little clues were, and he'll be damned if he won't follow them now. 

So. 

Let the others chase whispers of Clint across the earth, of Hawkeye and of Agent Barton. 

Phil looks for Ronin. 

Hell, he even runs cross-references on Deadpool and Mockingbird. 

It takes him longer than he'd like to hit pay-dirt. Weeks - three and a half in fact. Twenty four days too many in his considered opinion, but no one's asked him. Tony's been skirting him anxiously, Natasha's avoiding him all together, and it's been days since Steve has dared to send him one of his puppy-eyed looks of apology after Phil's rather disproportionate response to the last one. It's quiet, and it's calm, and it matches the loose, easy feeling in his chest when he finally lands on that one link, that one tenuous thread that feels so much like glowing, golden hope. 

He has it, he knows he has it. 

It's time to go. 

He keeps his plans a secret as best he can. He knows Fury is keeping tabs on him, knows Melinda May has collaborated with Natasha in some way to better monitor his movements, and as much as he resents it he's allowed it thus far. He's careful of course – his friends may be badasses but he's no slouch himself – so he keeps stringent control of himself and his emotions, only feeds them the information he wants them to have, only allows them to see what he wants them to see. 

They do their best to fix him – mend his prosthetic and fill his closet with suits he doesn't wear - and he lets them, he lets them do it all, and the whole time he makes dead certain they understand why he's angry. 

Clint's name is never spoken out loud, and Phil's makeshift go-bag, stuffed with supplies pilfered from throughout the tower, waits ever-ready next to the door. 

He knows the morning of the day, the day it's time for him to go. He can feel it in the very core of him as soon as he wakes up, a strange warmth and wanting, an eagerness to move and to run and to fight his way to his objective all obstacles be damned. Rolling out of bed with a youthful spryness he hasn't felt since his resurrection, he showers and dresses carefully in layers – t-shirt, henley, zip-up jacket, jeans and sturdy sneakers. He then joins the rest of them at the breakfast table and eats quite heartily, which probably puts them all on their guard but fuck it. 

They answer to him, not the other way around. 

"I want the property in Iowa searched," he says when they've all finally arrived at the table. "Today." 

"Got a good feeling about that one Agent?" Tony asks gently, but Phil doesn't react to the tone or the now-affectionate nickname. 

"I do," he replies flatly, all his words carefully chosen. None are lies – they won't ping on Natasha's radar – but that doesn't mean he's not choosing to leave some things ambiguous, to give an answer he knows doesn't click with the question being asked. 

He _does_ feel good about the property in Iowa - it will serve his purpose in keeping the Avengers distracted very nicely. 

He'll make as if he intends to go with them and they'll protest, vehemently deny his calm requests. Eventually he'll be left behind with Bruce, maybe Barnes as well while the others climb into a Quinjet, and Natasha will give him that look, that look like she knows she's disappointed him but is determined to right those wrongs. A part of him will break beneath that look – he doesn't want a rift between himself and Natasha anymore than he wants one between himself and Clint – but he's still angry, still hurt. She'd broken her promise to him, old as it was, when she let Clint falter, let him fall, and that was a sin that he was finding hard to look past. 

It doesn't matter. 

In the moment, in this moment, all he needs is for them to go, so he can give his keepers the slip and do what he needs to do. 

He's ready. 

He's prepared. 

Everything is going to be fine.

**AVAVA**

Everything is _not_ fine.

He thought he was prepared – he's not. 

He thought he was ready – he's not. 

It's painful how wrong he'd been, how much he'd overestimated his own reserves. It had happened just like he'd thought it would – Nat and Stark and Rogers and Barnes all climbing into the jet and flying off to Iowa on the snipe hunt he'd crafted for them, and Bruce, more alert than the rest of them, had actually left him alone after checking in, giving him the space he'd been making it so clear he wanted. 

Stupid on his part of course, but Phil couldn't complain. 

He'd grabbed his bag and his wallet and slipped out the door with no one the wiser, telling Jarvis he just needed a walk, to stock a nearby safe house for his own peace of mind. 

From there it was a train and two Greyhound busses, a short cab ride to a used car dealership where he pays cash for a battered blue Chevy truck that he promptly names Roque. Lola may be a classy lady but there's a soft spot in his heart for a rough, tough pick-up that you can count on till the day you run it into the ground. He winds his way down through Massachusetts and New Hampshire, takes his time, dallies here and there to make sure he's not being followed before pointing himself toward Maine. 

It takes time, nearly two weeks, keeping to the speed limit on all the highways and keeping a low profile wherever he breaks until he pulls into a truck stop for lunch and a quick stretch of his legs and ends up thrashing some redneck jackass before driving off with the man's dog in the passenger seat of his own truck. The thing is skinny and skittish, some kind of Lab-mixed mutt, brown and scruffy and pathetic, one eye missing and one leg badly bruised from the trucker's boots, and Phil risks checking into a cheap motel for the night just so he can give it a scrub down in the rust-stained bathtub. 

If it's going to be riding with him it can at least have the courtesy to smell decent. 

Phil doesn't even like dogs all that much. 

But it reminds him of Clint in a creepy sort of way that he doesn't want to examine too closely, so he calls it Lucky and buys it a purple bandana at a corner drug store, and drives with the window down so he can hang his head out in the wind even though the breeze sends slobber spattering back onto the interior. They spend three more days crossing the state, living on fast food burgers and tacos, sleeping in the cab, and harmonizing to Taylor Swift, which, more than anything, probably say something about Phil's state of mind. 

He's living out of a truck with a dog for Christ's sake - if any of his old agents could see him now... 

The thought makes him giggle nervously and it sounds so cracked that Lucky actually drags his head back inside the truck to look at him, to crawl across the seat and curl up beside him, his head a comforting weight on Phil's thigh. His arm aches horribly despite the seamless attachment and perfect healing that Stark and his med team have managed to provide him with but he wraps his artificial fingers around the steering wheel anyway, just so he can drop his real hand to the dogs head and scritch gently behind his ears. 

The closer he gets to his destination, the more anxious he's becoming, and the dog can sense it. 

It's dangerous, what he's doing, haring off across the northeast after something he was never brave enough to risk before. Not only because it's very likely damaging to his health. He's not a hundred percent yet, not even close – his arm, his chest, his everything pained and throbbing more often than not – and this trip, it hasn't helped. Worth it of course, no matter the outcome, but physically it's been a trial. 

Mentally it's perhaps been even worse. 

The closer he gets the shorter and faster his breathing becomes, the less coherent his thoughts. He feels lightheaded, very nearly dizzy, hot and cold and sweaty either way, and he has to blink rapidly several times to keep his vision of the rough, gravel road from doubling. His heart is hammering behind the thick, ropey scar across his chest, his pulse fluttering in his wrists and he's ashamed to admit, even to himself, that his hands are shaking. 

He actually has to pull over when he turns on to the road that will lead him into town, not coastal Maine but wooded, mountainous Maine. He knows where he's headed and he doesn't, knows what is waiting for him and doesn't, and he's so nauseous he nearly vomits into the grass. As it is he keeps his head tucked between his knees for a few minutes, only straightening up when a car slows and he has to wave them off. Spitting into the ditch, he clicks his fingers to call Lucky over to his side and climbs back in, mind starting to race with old memories, all those moments he somehow missed before, somehow let pass him by. 

The importance of getting back to Clint, of reclaiming the archer has become a hot brand pounding against the inside of his skull, the sense of urgency flooding back in on him so fast and hard that It's absolutely overwhelming, and by the time he slips through town, creeping down Main Street like running a gauntlet, he's absolutely shaking all over. 

He makes it but only just, making the long haul up an old logging trail and finding the sprawling cabin that had previously only existed on paper, a minor transfer between a dozen third-party buyers to a ghost SS number. It's huge and it's rustic and it's beautiful, and he hardly has the time to appreciate it before he's falling to his knees, unable to hold himself up anymore.


	8. Breaking In

"Alright dude," Clint says quietly as he carefully unlatches the door of the dog crate between his knees. "I'm just gonna leave this open for ya, and you can get on your merry way." 

Taking a step back, he waits with baited breath, trying to stay as still and as quiet as possible. He doesn't have to wait long – a minute later a soft, brown nose pokes out of the crate and snuffles curiously at the thick green grass outside. Clint tenses, ready to duck for cover, but the crates occupant pays him no mind as it steps out into the fresh air, blinking blearily in the sunshine before waddling off at an unhurried pace. 

Clint grins, waves his friend goodbye, and hefts the crate onto his shoulder for the hike back to his truck. 

If you had told him a year ago that he'd be a DNR officer for the great State of Maine he probably would have laughed. While he had been a SHIELD agent for several years, he still doesn't really feel like he can hack a law enforcement position. He hasn't done too bad thus far though – the Department of Natural Resources had been happy to take him on and he'd blown through their orientation and training, heading out into the field solo far sooner than he'd been told he would. It's a great job, fun, and he gets to spend most all day outdoors, trying out something new and different on each and every call he's sent on. 

Today was his very first porcupine release. 

Clint chuckles as he loads the crate into the back of his state-issued pickup, thinking about the little old lady who had called to report the critter trapped on her screened-in porch. She'd been a firecracker that one, flirting up a storm as soon as she'd answered the door, but he couldn't complain too much because she'd been more than willing to lend a helping hand. Clint, who had grown up in the cornfields of Iowa, had thought he'd read somewhere that porcupines could shoot their quills, and had subsequently been hesitant to approach the spiky rodent, but Ms. Marisol had simply grabbed up her straw-tailed broom and swept the porcupine into Clint's crate. From their it was a short drive to the woods and an easy release, far easier at least than that time with the skunk. 

Clint was never going to live _that_ down back at the office. 

Climbing into the cab of his truck, he starts the engine before tugging a moleskin notebook from between the seats, cracking it open to scribble in a short note about the release. 

This is part of it, see?

His self-imposed therapy. 

When he'd first come out here, things had been... well, stable, but not great. He'd been ok, but not happy, not content. He'd moved in to the cabin, set himself up, but he'd been surviving there, not thriving. He'd lived like that before, and he'd felt like he was backsliding, and he hadn't wanted to end up the same man he used to be. 

So, therapy, self-help. 

He got this job, one that he loves more than he would have thought possible, and he's made new friends. Every day he gets to do something new, see something beautiful, and all without the threat of life-or-death hanging over his head. 

It's not SHIELD work, it's not saving the world, but in all the time he's been out here, he's come to realize that that's ok. 

He doesn't owe the world more of himself than he can give. 

So he keeps a journal, and every day he writes down something good that happened, something that made him laugh, or smile, or ache with want. 

He's learned that it's ok to have bad days, but it's ok to have good ones too. 

Finishing up his note, Clint gets back on the road and heads toward Camden Hills. He's scheduled to patrol Warren Island later this week, both by boat and on foot, but for now he's being sent to make his rounds through the park. Bear season will be starting in ten days or so, which means the hunters will be setting up their bait piles, and it will be Clint's job to make sure none of that is happening too close to the tents and RV's of the visitors piling in to take advantage of the last few weeks of summer.

Nobody wants a black bear crashing their evening campfire because he's gotten used to a diet of weenies and s'mores. 

Pulling onto the highway, Clint sighs happily, country music on the radio and the wind in his hair. It's been a long time since he's felt so unburdened, since he's been able to just enjoy the sunshine and the fresh air and the bright greens of wooded wilderness. These past few months, maybe the last two or three, he's really settled in to this new life, and he's beginning to think that retirement suits him. 

Of course, his old life _would_ come crashing in on him the moment he's well and truly in love with his new one. 

His phone chimes with an alert that his security system has been tripped and Clint very nearly hits the brakes in the middle of the interstate, shocked by the automated message on the screen. The cabin he'd bought well over a year ago _does_ look like a prime target for robbery, sprawling and stuffed with... well, _stuff_ – hence the security system – but it's so far off the beaten path he'd never really expected to need it. Flipping the switch on his lights, he waits until it's safe, the pulls a U-turn and hits the gas, blazing back up the road in the opposite direction, calling off on his CB radio at the same. 

There's an irrational anger bubbling in the pit of his stomach, hot and sour as he gets closer and closer to home. It's stupid, of course it's stupid when it could just be a raccoon or some silly thing, but Clint's become used to his privacy this past year or so. Here in the backwoods of Maine he's just Clint Barton, not Hawkeye or Agent, and he has no gawkers or enemies or screaming fangirls to duck. He hasn't had to worry about paparazzi or stalkers or the villain of the week, can go about his business without guarding who he is and what he can do, and this, now, feels like a violation. 

The hair on the back of his neck is standing on end as he reaches the turnoff leading up into the mountain foothills, and somewhere deep in his chest he already knows what he suspects. Nat's given him more time than he thought she would, and he does miss her, still loves her as much as he ever did, but he's still angry, still hurt. That confuses something inside of him, because he's never begrudged her her methods before, but something, something in him asks why. 

Why now? 

Why like this? 

Perhaps he's a different man than he used to be, perhaps he's more upset with her abandonment than he wants to admit, or perhaps it's merely just that things have changed, but as he pulls up beside the blue Chevy parked catty-corner to the house, door left hanging open, he draws his gun. 

If it's an intruder, he'll be prepared, if it _is_ Nat, well... 

She maybe kind of deserves it. 

Pistol held ready, Clint glances at the front door and finds it untampered with, slips around the side of the house pressed tight against the log façade. He listens intently as he rounds the corner, unsurprised to find the french doors leading to the patio jimmied, the screen standing open. 

Rude – they're letting out his air conditioning. 

Stepping inside on silent feet, Clint quickly clears the dining room and kitchen before heading into the living room, only to be stopped in his tracks by the sight of a dead man sitting pale and sweaty on his couch. 

His heart skips a beat. 

His lungs seize up, but even if they worked he doesn't know if he could breathe around the lump in his throat. 

He can feel his pulse pounding in his fingertips and in his toes, hammering a staccato beat against his ribs, and it's almost with surprise that he realizes he's still standing there with his pistol raised, ready to pull the trigger. 

He flinches minutely, staring at the gun in his hand, he quickly flicks the safety back and on and stuffs it into his holster, his hands shaking for what might be the first time in his life. 

"Phil?" 

He doesn't know why he thinks it's him. God knows he's seen enough LMD's, enough holograms and Impersonators to last him a lifetime. Something in him though, something at the very heart of him looks at this man and recognizes who he is, recognizes that this is indeed Phil Coulson, Agent of SHIELD, dead of an Asgardian scepter through the chest. 

Only, not so dead it seems, though the look in Phil's eyes when he starts and turns at the sound of Clint's voice would argue that. 

He only has a moment for that thought to taunt him, that fear, before a flash of chocolate brown fur surges up off the floor and comes barreling toward him, crashing into his legs in a flailing mass of legs and tail and long, slobbery tongue. 

_Dog._

_Can I pet it one time?_

He's leaning over to stroke the mutt before he even knows what he's doing, and it's stupid because hello, earth to Barton, more important things to deal with. 

He can't though, brain is offline, no more braining today. 

Except... 

Except here is Phil Coulson, looking very much alive but very much dead on his feet, and it hurts something deep inside of him that he doesn't think has ever been hurt before, because Phil Coulson, grade-A badass and Agent of SHIELD, looks lost and broken and like he wouldn't really recognize Clint if he walked up and kissed him on the mouth. 

Which, if he's honest, he has a very overwhelming urge to do. 

Disentangling himself from the dog that's wound itself around his ankles, Clint takes a careful step around the end of the coffee table, approaching Phil the same way he would approach a wounded deer on the side of the highway. Holding up his side of the metaphor, Phil watches him like a deer in headlights, all dark-eyed wariness, until Clint eases down onto the couch beside him. What he does then might be the very last thing Clint would expect him to do – he silently launches himself into Clint's arms, wrapping his own around Clint's shoulders and holding on like Clint is the last life preserver left in the water. 

A sob wracks his frame as he buries his face in the curve of Clint's shoulder, and out of instinct more than anything he feels his own arms come up to wrap around the man's waist, feels Phil's fingers twisting themselves into the fabric of his linen work shirt. He feels different, smells different, everything pointing to the fact that this can't really be Phil Coulson practically sitting in his lap right now, but something tells Clint that it can't be anything but the truth, can't be anything but real. 

Stroking his palm up and down Phil's spine, he tries to soothe the violent sobs that are shaking the older man's body like a hurricane. He doesn't know what storm Phil has just come through, but he looks awful, sounds awful, and it's very, very clear that something's not right, but that can wait. 

That can all wait. 

"Easy," he murmurs against Phil's hair, breathing him in despite the lack of familiar aftershave, the ink-and-coffee scent he'd come to love. "I've got you." 

Phil gulps a few times, tries to catch his breath, pulls back and drags his wrists across his face like he's suddenly ashamed to have been caught crying, but while Clint expects him to pull on his Agent Coulson mask it never comes. He sits there trembling, staring at his own hands, staring up at Clint's face like he isn't sure how he got here, and maybe he isn't but that isn't a prospect he's all that happy to contemplate. 

_How was he here?_

"I've got you." 

It's a promise whether he means it or not - the sick, heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach hasn't gone away. There are about a hundred questions running through his mind and he's not smart enough to stop himself from speculating about the answers, none of them good. He's already planning his interrogation of certain, deceitful parties, but, again, more important things to deal with at hand. 

Phil doesn't seem particularly inclined to speak out loud, in fact, he's not doing much of anything except hiccoughing as the tears dry up, slouching down against Clint's side as the last of his energy drains away. There are dark circles under his eyes that suggest he hasn't been sleeping well, and Clint would bet his last dollar that whatever's happened that brought him back hasn't been all that kind or considerate of his physical or mental health. He's falling asleep on his feet – or rather, in his seat – so Clint pushes away the burning questions, the need for a true reunion, and guides Phil down onto the couch instead, stuffing a throw pillow under his head and dragging the afghan down off the back of the couch to tuck him in. 

He snuggles for a minute, face pressed to Clint's thigh where he's still perched on the edge of the cushions, but it only takes a moment for him to be out like a light, the vice-grip of his fingers around Clint's wrist falling away as he drops like a stone into unconsciousness. He takes the chance to check Phil's pulse, fingers pressed to the artery in his throat – strong and steady, if a little fast – then stands before he does something monumentally stupid like run his hand through Phil's hair. 

He wants to hold him, wants to curl up beside him and cry, but the dog does that job for him, jumping up onto the couch and tucking himself in behind Phil's knees like he belongs there, even if dogs were never really Phil's thing. 

He's glad of it – it makes him feel a little better and keeps him from being able to do the same himself. He's having a hard enough time not staring like a stalker-creep, even if that instinct is at war with his instinct to panic and run. His home, his space has been invaded and all his senses are telling him that something is wrong, that a dead man should not be sleeping fitfully on his sofa, but it's Phil and Clint would be dead in the ground himself before he abandoned Phil Coulson to any kind of fate. 

Making sure that he's settled and not going to come lunging off the couch as soon as he steps away, Clint digs his cell phone out of his pocket and steps into another room. 

He's got some questions need answering.


	9. Coming Clean

"Tell me that it's him." 

"Clint?" 

"Tell me that it's really him Tasha," Clint demands, letting the anger bleed through so that his voice doesn't crack. "I can't..." 

"It's him," Tony's voice says over the phone, and Clint balks because he hadn't realized he was on speaker, hadn't wanted to be. "Where..." 

"Don't," he growls, a broken, angry sound, like a cornered alleyway dog that knows this is going to be his last fight. "Don't fucking trace me Stark..." 

There's a scuffle, harsh words and a thump, a muffled yelp, then Natasha is back on the line and she's asking him the familiar code phrases that cut the tension in his shoulders like tinsnips through wire. 

"The bodega on fifth," he replies, "I ran out to grab a dozen eggs and I got caught up with the neighbors." 

Natasha's sigh whistles down the line and it's so full of relief and hurt and reprimand that Clint has to grind his teeth not to bark at her too, not to say anything he doesn't mean because he resents the forced guilt. 

"I'm sorry," she says before she says anything else, and he knows she means it because she hardly ever says the actual words. "I'm sorry we chased you away Little Bird." 

Clint blinks, surprised, but that doesn't matter now, he doesn't care about that anymore. He'd never hated her, had never really even been mad, and now, with so many more things pressing in on him... 

"He's there?" she asks, the relief palpable once more. "He's there with you?" 

"Yeah, he... he's here." 

Nat mutters thanks in Russian to a god she doesn't believe in, and Clint feels like his strings have been clipped, sinks like a broken puppet into one of his dining chairs. His head hits his folded arm, his face hidden in the crook of his elbow as he keeps the phone tucked tight to his ear, and then it's his turn to sigh, shaky and uncertain. 

"Nat..." he whimpers, and he can practically hear her drawing herself up, straightening her shoulders to carry his weight just like Strike Team Delta had always done. 

"He really did die in the Battle of New York," she says, and Clint's heart catches in his chest. "Fury brought him back later, with TAHITI." 

Clint's breath hisses between his teeth – he remembers TAHITI, the project that had left Phil looking so defeated and uncertain so many years ago, ready to give his resignation. 

"He's not the same Clint," Natasha warns, continuing before he can protest. "Fury gave him a team, the bus he always wanted, but it wasn't what he thought. He had May and Ward spying on him, waiting for him to crack, what... whatever they did to him..." 

Clint can't breathe; he's never heard Natasha ramble like this, has only heard her this afraid one time, when she'd been holding his guts inside his belly and Coulson had had his fingers pinching Clint's carotid closed, and that's not good, that is very not good. 

"He's not stable," she says carefully, and Clint makes a sound like a wounded animal caught in a trap. "Clint. He touched something he shouldn't have... he lost his arm..." 

"What?" he yips, sitting up so fast it makes him sick. "No! He has..." 

"A prosthetic," Nat explains, "First Fury's, now Stark's. He showed up at the Tower looking like he'd been hit by a truck; he'd gone AWOL. Now he's carving alien glyphs all over the walls, his head's a mess... He's Coulson but he's not _Coulson_ Clint. Do you understand?" 

There's something she's not telling him. 

He can feel it, and he could always read her better than he let on. 

He might not be able to see her now, might not have her in front of him to read the infinitesimal ticks off her face, but he always knew her better than she thought he did. 

"So he needs time to heal?" he asks, his throat tight and his voice like gravel because he knows the answer. "Did they even give him..." 

"A few weeks, if he was lucky. But we don't believe in luck, you and I. Do we?" 

"No," he breathes. 

"What will you do?" 

He doesn't know. 

He doesn't know, ok? 

It's not fair of her to ask. 

He'd come out here to... to get his head on straight, to find himself, whatever hippie bullshit you wanted to call it, and he's been doing that. He _likes_ this life he's started to build, a normal, easy life with a normal, easy job and normal, easy people. He hasn't even thought about going back to the Avengers someday, because he's not even close to ready to do it. 

Phil appearing in his living room, alive and kicking, doesn't actually help. 

"I just need some time," he mutters nonsensically, and not even he knows what he means. "We both... we both just need time, that's all. It works, it works up here, he can... _we can..."_

"Clint!" 

Clint blinks, sits up, startled by Natasha's sharp call. He's suddenly exhausted, his body heavy, as if he's at the end of a long weekend instead of halfway through his regular Tuesday, and he wants nothing more than to take the rest of the week off, to take the boat down to the river behind his house and canoe up to his favorite fishing spot, spend the afternoon napping in the shade. 

Fresh air, exercise... those are good for everybody right? 

"I'm fine," he says, and his voice is low and hoarse and rough but damn it, he's gonna make it the truth. "Nat, I'm fine. I'm just..." 

"Yeah," she says quietly into the phone, and Clint can imagine the look on her face, the stunned horror he'd felt stepping inside of his own home to find one Phillip J Coulson inside. "Yeah, I know." 

And he believes her. 

Because as much as Clint had been in love with Phil, as much as they had maybe kinda almost been stepping toward starting something, that had all been... extra. Outside of that, before that, first and foremost they had been Strike Team Delta, three all equal in bravery and badassery, and Coulson had meant as much to Nat as he had meant to Clint. 

Only, it's not _had_ anymore is it? 

The past tense had never come close to sitting right in his mouth, and it still doesn't, but somehow... 

Somehow the present tense doesn't feel right either, not even when he looks over and catches sight of Phil's dominant hand hanging free off the end of his couch. 

"I've got him," he murmurs, and it's more to reassure himself than anything, but Nat makes a pained sound through the phone and he can't ignore her, can't let her hurt. "We'll... he'll be alright Tash. I've got this." 

"Call me," she demands, and there's more insistence in her voice than Clint thinks he's ever heard. "Promise. Don't make me come find you before you're ready." 

"I promise Nat," he says in Russian, vowels too soft in his gentle Midwest drawl, the one he'd never truly managed to get rid of when he wasn't trying. "I'll take care of him." 

"You take care of _you."_

Easier said than done. 

He and Nat say their goodbyes and Clint hangs up, clipping his phone back into his belt. Standing sharply, he blows out a shaky breath and scrubs his hands over his face, wraps his arms around his ribs and starts pacing. 

He doesn't like this. 

Doesn't like that Stark now knows where he is, doesn't like the fact that Nat is worried. 

Doesn't like that Phil is here, inside the protected bubble of this new life, alive. 

And that hurts. 

There had been weeks there, in the beginning, months, where Clint had hoped, where he had done stupid things like lie in bed in the dark remembering all the weird, otherworldly shit he had ever seen or done with SHIELD, all the things that might give him pause to think, _maybe._

He'd wanted this, hoped for it when it was impossible, and now that he has it... 

It's not the unadulterated joy he'd always thought it would be. 

He has to be honest with himself now, standing in the middle of his kitchen staring into the living room where Phil lies sleeping fitfully on his couch. 

When he'd thought of it before he... 

He doesn't really know what he'd thought – that Phil would be fine and nothing would have even really happened at all, that nothing would have changed. 

This isn't what he'd wanted. 

Not this fragile, broken Phil barely recognizable from the man he once knew. 

But... 

It _is_ what he'd wanted too. 

If he's going to be honest here, with no witness but the dog that's peering at him warily from behind Phil's knees, he should probably be completely honest. 

He is one hundred percent, head-over-heels gone on Phil Coulson, and he'll take him any way he can get. 

Sighing, Clint unloads his gun and puts it away, hangs his belt and takes off his boots, strips down to his undershirt. After calling in to work on a family emergency, he grabs a couple of beers from the fridge and heads into the living room, settling down into the armchair near Phil's feet to do what a sniper does best. 

Watch, and wait.

**AVAVA**

Phil wakes up unsure of where he is and how he'd come to be there. The last thing he remembers is pulling over on the side of the road, trying not to puke, and then – less coherently – pulling up in front of a cabin in the mountains. He remembers the sense of needing something, of wanting, and a sense of desperation that had gone deep and frantic.

His heart kicks up in his chest and he breathes quietly through his nose, controlling the rise and fall of his chest as he takes stock of his surroundings. He's lying down on his side, his dominant hand free, and there's a soft piece of furniture beneath him. Some subtle flexing tells him that he's free of any restraints, save a warm, heavy weight across his calves that gives and shifts like it's alive... the dog. 

It comes back to him slowly – the trek across the Northeast, the dog, the cabin – but that's not the most important, not... 

"Know you're awake." 

He ought to flinch, a part of his brain knows that. Knows that it's not a good thing he hadn't even realized there was another person in the room, that he's been sleeping unprotected and there's no gun under the cushions by his side. 

The other part of his brain, his _heart_ recognizes Clint's voice and all the things that means without a second's hesitation, despite the fact that it's low and gravelly and a little slurred, and not quite right somehow. 

It makes him want to curl up beside the archer and pull him into his arms, to hold him and pet his hair and promise him all the things he never got enough of when he was young, that he still wants to badly as a man and tries so hard to hide. 

Sitting up, he knuckles the sleep from his eyes and stretches, rocks his head back and forth to decompress the joint in his neck. It's dusk, the last of the day's sunset slanting in lowly through the huge, floor-to-ceiling windows, casting Clint into swirling color and shadow where he sits quietly in an armchair a few feet away. 

"You're drunk," Phil says quietly, before he knows he's going to, because a quick glance is enough to prove that. 

Clint rarely ever drinks, only with Natasha really, when they've lost someone on an op. Vodka to honor the dead, he says, and Phil/ doesn't really want to think about what that might mean right now, with him here. He's nervous enough, what with the six, seven glass bottles cluttering up the table at Clint's elbow, the unreadable expression on his face. 

"Stupid," he says quietly, and he sounds like he's thinking clearly enough, but Phil's own head is still... odd, so he doesn't trust his own judgement. "Best news of my life standing right in front of me and I can't..." 

"Never saw anything you couldn't handle Hawkeye," Phil hears himself say, getting to his feet as he falls back on the comfortable familiarity of handler and asset, the safety of a relationship long held in high esteem. 

Clint's face goes flat and cold. 

"Not Hawkeye," he says, sounding hurt and strangled. "Not anymore." 

Phil swallows hard, feels his muscles tense, the panic rising hot and sharp and wild in his chest, like some animal just beneath his skin, trapped and anxious to fight. 

"Who does that make me then?" he asks in a choked whisper, because why else had he come here, why else had he fought so hard to get back to Clint if... 

"I mean, that's who I was right?" he insists, folding his arms protectively against his chest, dropping his chin because he can't bear to meet Clint's gaze, that painfully intense stare that has always seen right to the core of him. "Hawkeye's handler?" 

"Yeah," Clint agrees gruffly, after a moment of heavy silence passes. "But it's just Clint now, so... I guess that makes you Clint's friend." 

"Hm." 

It's a quiet noise, a hum not quite of agreement, but... consideration. 

He... he has to think about that, about how it makes him feel, because they'd been friends before, yes, but this seems like... less. 

And... more, too, if he's honest about the way it immediately calms him, stills the storm building to a tempest inside his chest. 

Taking a step forward, he takes the nearly-empty bottle dangling from Clint's fingers and puts it down on the coffee table, careful not to touch him. 

"Come to bed," he murmurs, easy as anything, no particular distress attached to the request, until Clint's mouth does something sharp and unpleasant and he leans back like Phil's slapped him across the face. 

_"What?"_

"Do we not do that anymore now?" he asks with a dulled curiosity, everything coming to him as if through a thick, cotton web, muffled. "I thought I'd remembered... it's just with the hand..." 

He makes a vague gesture with his left, his fake hand, silly, because Clint doesn't even _know..._

"It's only that it's a new place," he explains mildly, staring down at his new hand with a sense of detachment regarding the limb that isn't entirely new. "Don't have my gun. I used to have a gun..." 

"Used to have a lot of things." 

"What?" Phil asks, cocking his head and looking up to stare at Clint, who'd muttered under his breath, clearly not intending him to hear. 

"Nothing," he shrugs, pushing himself to his feet. 

He moves slowly, the way he does when he's had his ribs bruised for him, and Phil wonders if he's injured, or if he's just stiff form sitting in the chair for... a while. 

How long has it been since Clint had come home, what had he told him? 

Their previous conversation, or lack thereof, filters back to him slowly, bits and pieces, useless information that doesn't really provide him any answers, and he shakes his head irritably, like it will help to clear it, his brain an etch-a-sketch mess of thin, scribbled lines. 

"No worries boss," Clint says quietly, his eyes tracing over Phil in that familiar way they had, seeing too much. "I've got your back. Come on." 

Phil follows him docilely, the dog hopping down off the couch and trailing along on his heels, up a flight of stairs leading to the loft left open over the living room. There's a California King in the middle of the wide, airy space, situated beneath a bank of skylights, and Clint goes straight for the left side, pulling down the navy-colored duvet that's been drawn up sloppily over the sheets. He doesn't truly remember their evening rituals, but something about it feels comfortingly familiar, and before Phil knows what he's doing he's got his shirt of and his pants shoved down over his hips, and he's crawling under the covers in his boxer-briefs, Lucky following him with an ungainly leap. 

Clint just stares. 

Phil meets his eyes fearlessly now, where he'd been unable to before, waits with his heart in his throat until Clint turns away. Stepping across the room, he rummages in a dresser for a pair of sweats, quickly swapping out his cargo pants before coming back to sit on the edge of the bed. He stays there for a moment, facing the wall, silent, before he swings his legs up onto the mattress and scooches down into the blankets turning over onto his stomach and wrapping his arms around the pillow. He's staring, still staring, and it's getting too dark to see the flecks of gold in his eyes, so Phil just offers him a tired smile and snuggles down into the bed, looks up at the indigo night coming in above him. 

He falls asleep like that, warm and vaguely happy, stars shining overhead and Clint Barton beside him. 

He hasn't felt that safe in he can't remember when. 

Just as his mind starts to drift, a broken sob whispers through the quiet. 

"Don’t you leave me again Phil. Come back to me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Distracting myself until I can see Infinity War. Review me please!


End file.
